US: DynCorp Disgrace
Publisher Name:
Insight Magazine
Article Author:
Kelly Patricia O'Meara
Monday, January 14, 2002
Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben
Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew
the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing
business in Bosnia.
According to the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) lawsuit filed in Texas on behalf of the former DynCorp aircraft mechanic, "in the latter part of 1999 Johnston learned that employees and supervisors from DynCorpwere engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, forged passports and [participating in other immoral acts.
Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally
buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees
would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they
had purchased."
Rather than acknowledge and reward
Johnston's effort to get this behavior
stopped, DynCorp fired him, forcing him into protective custody by the U.S.
Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) until the investigators could get him safely out of Kosovo and returned to the
United States. That departure from the war-torn country was a far cry from what
Johnston imagined a year earlier when he arrived in
Bosnia to begin a three-year U.S. Air Force contract with DynCorp as an aircraft-maintenance technician for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.
For more than 50 years DynCorp, based in
Reston, Va., has been a worldwide force providing maintenance support to the
U.S. military through contract field teams (CFTs). As one of the federal government's top 25 contractors, DynCorp has received nearly $1 billion since 1995 for these services and has deployed 181 personnel to
Bosnia during the last six years. Although DynCorp long has been respected for such work, according to
Johnston and internal DynCorp communications it appears that extracurricular sexcapades on the part of its employees were tolerated by some as part of its business in
Bosnia.
But DynCorp was nervous. For instance, an internal e-mail from DynCorp
employee Darrin Mills, who apparently was sent to
Bosnia to look into reported problems, said, "I met with Col. Braun [a base supervisor] yesterday. He is very concerned about the CID investigation; however, he views it mostly as a DynCorp problem. What he wanted to talk about most was how I am going to fix the maintenance problems here and how the investigation is going to impact our ability to fix his airplanes." The Mills e-mail continued: "The first
thing he told me is that 'they are tired of having smoke blown up their ass.'
They don't want anymore empty promises."
An e-mail from Dyncorp's
Bosnia site supervisor, John Hirtz (later fired for
alleged sexual indiscretions), explains DynCorp's position in
Bosnia. "The
bottom line is that DynCorp has taken what used to be a real positive program that has very high visibility with every Army unit in the world and turned it into a bag of worms. Poor quality was the major issue."
Johnston was on the ground and saw firsthand what the military was
complaining about. "My main problem," he explains, "was [sexual
misbehavior] with the kids, but I wasn't too happy with them ripping off the
government, either. DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do. There was this one guy who would hide parts so we would have to wait for parts and, when the military would question why it was taking so long, he'd pull out the part and say 'Hey, you need to install this.' They'd have us replace windows in helicopters that weren't bad just to get paid. They had one kid, James Harlin, over there who was right out of high school and he didn't even know the names and purposes of the basic tools. Soldiers that are paid $18,000 a year know more than this kid, but this is the way they [DynCorp] grease their pockets. What they say in
Bosnia is that DynCorp just needs a warm body - that's the DynCorp slogan. Even if you don't do an eight-hour day, they'll sign you in for it because that's how they bill the government. It's a total fraud."
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